Note for non-Australian visitors

In Australia "Liberal" is Right-Wing Neo-Cons; economically liberal, socially repressive, tax the poor to subsidise the rich. Republican is also a good thing, as opposed to being a lackey of the British monarchy.

‘Huge Labour gains leave Coalition with identity crisis’

Not a typo in the title, that is headline of the results of the UK local elections

Labour gained more than 820 seats, beating expectations, the Tories lost more than 400 and the Lib Dems lost more than 330… The turnout was a disappointing 32 per cent.

Some commentators have seen this election result as an end to the rusted on voters, however, it may just as easily be seen as voters overwhelmingly voting out a government that gave the poor and working poor austerity while giving tax cuts to the right.

Voters in Britain voted against Right wing parties and the Liberal-Democrats who were seen as compromised for joining a coalition with the Tories.

As the UK results show, their voters had ‘buyers remorse’ and voted Left. So, maybe we here in Australia could save ourselves the regret of voting for a Right wing party next federal election, and just vote Left in 2013.

These results also show that democracy is in the hands of those who show up, and while we do have compulsory voting in Australia, we still need to energise and awaken those on the Left and Greens to not vote for a Tony Abbott led government just to ‘punish’ the Labor party, and rewarding Abbott’s never-ending smear campaign.

post added by 99.
Use of quotes from ‘The Independent’, Andrew Grace is not intended to imply they, or UK voters, or the UK Labour party, Tories, LibDem party or UK non-voters, would endorse the contents of this post or blog, and quotes used for educational, information, critique purposes under the Fair Use section of the copyright act.